Video: Moron wants to fine chefs for cooking with … salt

posted at 5:15 pm on March 11, 2010 by Allahpundit

This being NYC, the moron in question is of course a city councilman state assemblyman. At this point, the most surprising thing is that he doesn’t want to go further. Why ban salt but not sugar? Both are tasty, both are essential to every form of cooking, and both can cause health problems if consumed excessively. Let’s save some lives: No more doughnuts for anyone.

Via DrewM, here’s all the background you need. Simply the perfect marriage of aggressive ignorance and aggressive statism.

Ortiz admits that prior to introducing the bill he did not research salt’s role in food chemistry, its effect on flavor or his bill’s ramifications for the restaurant industry. He tells me he was prompted to introduce the bill because his father used salt excessively for many years, developed high blood pressure and had a heart attack.

“I think salt should be banned in restaurants. I ask if a dish has salt in it, and if I does, I get something else that doesn’t have salt,” Ortiz tells me, before going on to say that he has eaten, and expects he will continue to eat, among other things, ham, cheese and bread in restaurants, all of which contain salt…

Regardless of the intent, and accepting its sponsor’s claim that it is part of his campaign to improve the public’s health, the bill exhibits profound ignorance not only of matters of taste — literally — but also of the chemistry of cooking.

“It’s a preposterous notion,” says baker extraordinaire Michael London, whose Mrs. London’s Bakery has been a Saratoga Springs institution for more than three decades. “Not using salt would make breads insipid and anemic,” London says. Besides lacking flavor, saltless bread would also have different texture, density and other characteristics as a result of its altered chemistry, London tells me…

“That [bill is] insane,” says Christopher Allen Tanner, a culinary professor at Schenectady County Community College in Schenectady. “You can’t make hams without salt, you can’t make bacon without salt,” he tells me. “There would be no pickles, no relishes, no — no just about everything.”

Even in the Bloombergian paradise, I assume this bill is doomed, but if it passes it may be time for the big A to (finally) abandon ship. Recommendations for a new home base are welcome in the comments; in lieu of that, please sign the petition. Here’s video from Fox of the man with the plan. Note what he says near the end about how this ties into controlling escalating health-care costs.

Update: Worse and worse: I erred in thinking this guy was a councilman. He’s actually a state assemblyman, so this ban would, theoretically, apply statewide. The good news? It’s a lot harder to get a moronic progressive bill through the state legislature than the city council, even in a state as Democratic as New York.

Ortiz admits that prior to introducing the bill he did not research salt’s role in food chemistry, its effect on flavor or his bill’s ramifications for the restaurant industry.

He tells me he was prompted to introduce the bill because his father used salt excessively for many years, developed high blood pressure and had a heart attack.

Heh. In other words, “Hey, let’s pass legislation on a subject I know nothing about because I’m too damn lazy to learn about it. By the way it may cost alot too, but since my dad mismanaged his health, it’s worth it.”

Instead, they need to be more concerned about their own kind, those who want the free ride on somebody else’s dime.

If salt is so bad for health, let the FDA step in and ban it outright, even for private consumption. We can’t legally buy crack, so let’s put salt under the same laws. And tobacco, too. No more taxes on it. BAN it all!

Tylenol, in too high a dose, causes liver damage. Ban that, too. Some people might not know when to stop taking it!

In some patients, Vaigra can kill, and a lot faster and more suddenly than taking in too much salt. Ban that as well, right away!

Funny–all these lefties who want to impose bans also push for legalizing pot.

Ortiz admits that prior to introducing the bill he did not research salt’s role in food chemistry, its effect on flavor or his bill’s ramifications for the restaurant industry. He tells me he was prompted to introduce the bill because his father used salt excessively for many years, developed high blood pressure and had a heart attack.

And this is the liberal mindset in a nutshell: All emotion, no reason.

Maybe Mr. Ortiz should quit going out to eat if he’s so concerned about salt content. I know as I get older, I can’t take restaurant food like I used to. I wake up the next day with a salt hangover. My solution is just not to do it as often. Seems to work pretty well for me.

Cooks and bakers of HotAir, unite! Unite in your mockery of this complete moron by listing the various prepared foods in your kitchen that would be effectively banned by this bill:

Every form of bread I know of
Every cookie
Every dish with eggs
Every dish with oats
Every dish with beef, chicken or pork
Every cheese
Every sauce
Anything with milk in it
and therefore anything with butter or cream in it
Any vegetable in a can

I think the only food left is raw fruits and vegetables, some of which are very good for you.

I think this bill is an excellent idea – it’s a combination of ignorance, arrogance, audacity and sheer evil which is bound to lower the estimation of statist politicians in the eyes of liberals in New York and beyond. Oh wait, what am I talking about. I was on the M15 bus on 2nd avenue earlier and the couple behind me were talking about it. The guy says “well, I think it’s a great idea, people eat too much salt without even knowing it. If it improves people’s health then I don’t see a bad side.”

Honestly, the stupidity of people is really, really starting to get me down. I’m running late tonight because some schtyoopid woman dropped her purse on the subway tracks at 77th st, jumped down to retrieve it and got splattered all over the platform by a train as she tried to get back up. I mean come on.

2 Things,I can create jobs if this passes.I will move to NY and hire crews to sell small salt shakers outside of every eatery in the city.Every employee will be contract and I won’t have to pay for health care and payroll taxes.The next thing is are they going to ban normal saline I.V.’s in ERs and hospitals?I know it is not food but the salt gets to the system fast.

Ever hear of Gandhi’s famous “bread and salt” speech? Or maybe how hospitality was shown by providing bread and salt?

It’s just that today so many preserved and processed foods use salt as a preservative, that most of us get our daily intake of salt long before we ever get to any of the especially salty foods. Additionally salt, can be absorbed by plants or animals and passed on to us that way.

But that doesn’t mean you can just avoid salt and be okay. In fact my father’s family had a history of high blood pressure, so we had a salt free table. My sister then developed heart trouble because she didn’t have a high enough salt intake.

Basically salt is like carbohydrates (ie sugar). In overly large amounts it can be harmful. But if you don’t get any then you will also be harmed.

You should definitely move to New Orleans. The food’s great, the weather’s better, and the rent’s cheaper. Unfortunately, Louisiana’s the happiest state in the nation, which could dampen your Eeyore cred. One shudders to think of AP whistling zippadeedoodah while surrounded by cartoon butterflies.

Ortiz doesn’t just need to be shut down, and impeached, the idiot needs to be kept away from sharp and blunt objects for the rest of his life. Which, if he never eats any salt, will be relatively short.

In other words, this man is SO stupid, he could ONLY have survived to adulthood by the constant protection and assistance of others.

He doesn’t think that there should be “an exsex of sodium to be putted on de food.” Is it really possible that his idiot is a New York “lawmaker”?? Then again, who am I kidding? He’ll probably run for President in 2012. He’ll get elected by telling all the liberal morons that he negotiated the SALT Treaty.

One of the reasons I might consider moving out of NY state – getting out of the clutches of jerks like this guy who seem intent on banning at least one commodity a year to justify their existences. See numchucks…le sigh.

I hope the idiotic bill does pass. Since the people of NY are too stupid to know who’s representing them, it’s about time they learned what an ignorant bunch of crooks they keep voting in to office. It’s about time they got a good smell of what’s cooking in Albany! Let them eat tasteless crap for a while.

Wow, this guy can hardly speak english yet he’s telling us what we can eat. I’m sorry his dad had a heart attack but then his dad should cut down on salt, not the rest of New York. However, since New Yorkers are mostly libs, and they voted this clown in, they deserve this.

If salt is so bad for you that the State must step in and protect you from it so are a lot of other things. I work in a very stressful job, mmmm stress can cause all kinds of health problems so by his thinking my job should be band.

Having stated that, I will be boiling crawfish today and I use a bunch of salt to do that. Also Sunday when I smoke my ribs, not only do the ribs soak in Brine (lots of salt in that) for 8 hours, I use salt in my dry rub. So I guess I am not a good American, as I am upping health care cost or something.

Why are so very many politicians tantamount to something akin of low-functioning idiot savant’s?

…

SilverStar830 on March 12, 2010 at 3:34 AM

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm– but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

This state legislator is dumber than a salt lick!
However while once there would be little chance for passage in the State Legislature because the Republicans controlled the Senate; now the Dems control both houses of the Legislature, though by a thin margin, so these wackadoo pieces of leftwing crapola have a much better chance of passing.
The silver lining on this is that we are again witnessing what would happen if Obamacare passed. Legislators in Congress or the States would pass laws outlawing anything even tangentially negative to one’s health on the grounds of improving health care and cost reduction. This is the camel’s neck in the tent (cigarettes was the first shot, then came fatty foods, now its salt the food police are after). It is also interesting to note that all people have a required salt intake and there is not a one size fits all category that each person must have. This can vary between 2000 mg per day to 5000 mg per day, with most people in the US having an average of about 3300 mg a day. Even the 3300 per day in the US IS BELOW the WORLDWIDE DAILY SALT INTAKE AVERAGE of approximately 3700 mg a day. The salt nazis want to have us reduce our salt consumption to ONE THIRD of the world average salt consumption (just like these lefties would want us to reduce our petrol consumption to one third of the western industrial average). This is ridiculous.

Although born in Brooklyn, I escaped from New York to the midwest as a teenager.

Perhaps something present in the water there has infected the NY state assembly with the same brain-deadening disease which caused the Indians to sell Manhatten for a few beads…or maybe the Indians were actually smarter than we thought.

AP, stay out of Indiana. You wouldn’t like it here. Not enough beta males to make you feel at home and even the ugly girls aren’t as easy as you would need them to be.
Try California. The weather’s nicer and you can dress as feminine as you’d like and nobody will notice.

Allahpundit take it from someone who moved from the Bronx, try Greenville SC. The down town is beta friendly but otherwise the area is a libertarian leaning Red State. We also have better Thai food than NYC.

Plus the gun laws are awesome. There pretty much aren’t any. Downside of the area is that most of the people down here seem to be from NEW York or NJ.